Baseball Player Magazine

Although the summer’s over with, Pat Shortt’s job isn’t finished. The Northeast Scouting Supervisor for the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau has AAU games to cover, fall ball, and much more. In his 19 seasons as a scout, he has seen hundreds of players at the prep and collegiate level who have gone on to be drafted and dozens who have reached the major leagues, from Brooklyn and St. John’s product Rich Aurilia to right-handed starter Carl Pavano. He took a moment to sit down with Baseball Player Magazine to discuss the curious stage that is summer baseball. 

BPM: What do you look for most from players in the summer?

PS: One of the things I look for is stick-to-itiveness, not just out in the Hamptons, in the Kaiser Division or the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League but everywhere.

It happens all over where players don’t realize the purpose of going and don’t look at it as a serious endeavor. I can’t prove it, but too many players find reasons for leaving before their commitment is completed. Some come up with phantom injuries, phantom summer school courses, dates they have to be back even though school doesn’t start for another two weeks … If you go out and play professional baseball, it takes a serious commitment. You’re living in small towns, you’re traveling in buses, you’re not on a meal plan, and you have to fend for yourself as far as your dietary needs. Commitment doesn’t stand out but a lack of commitment does. It gives us the indication of a potential issue – if things aren’t going as well as they want them to, is a kid going to quit? [Summer baseball] is a serious commitment. It’s a game, it’s fun, but at the same time it can be grueling. Commitment isn’t a tool but it’s an intangible, a big intangible. 

BPM: Talk about the difference between swinging aluminum and wood bats.

PS: The wooden bat is a great equalizer. One of the big things between using a aluminum bat against a wooden bat is you don’t have to hit the ball square dead-center with the aluminum. Mechanically, you don’t have to finish your swing as strongly either. Players aren’t used to that until they start swinging the wood long enough. They realize they have to make some minor adjustments. From an offensive standpoint, it’s a big difference. 

BPM: How about from a defensive and pitching perspective?

PS: Defensively, I look for range, first-step quickness, arm strength and good hands of course. For pitchers, I’m looking to see if they can demonstrate the ability to locate the pitchers in their repertoire. The definition of control is the ability to put the ball within the strike zone more often than not. The definition of command is the ability to put the ball in that square where you want more often than not, and location is a result of command. I also look for raw arm strength, the ability to spin a breaking ball, throw a change-up with some deception. 

BPM: What is the role of summer baseball in the scouting world today?

PS: Summer baseball is really used as a method of wetting your whistle, to see if someone shows a few tools and makes you want to go back and see them in the fall. The fall is the same thing – you’re looking to find players that you want to gout and see in the spring, especially those that are draft eligible in the upcoming spring.

 
BPM: How much do you take into account players’ fatigue from the spring collegiate season?

PS: I definitely do, especially with pitchers. I take fatigue more seriously in the fall because they’ve played all spring, all summer and then in the fall. Especially with pitchers, you see velocities go down. 

BPM: What’s the best case you can think of where someone dramatically raised his draft stock over the course of a summer?

PS: Billy Wagner in Cape Cod. He went to a little Division III school called Ferrum College in Virginia and here’s this 5-foot-9 lefty that somehow gets out on one of those teams out there and was lights out. He went from being an unknown guy to a big-time known guy. 

BPM: What is the process you use once you identify a player that you or someone might be interested in?

PS: If I see a player that I feel possesses enough ability to warrant 30 teams following him – and it doesn’t matter when it is – I write a follow report. In the spring, I write a selectable report on a player that is draft eligible in June, whether it’s a high school kid or a draft eligible college player. The selectable reports are for kids teams should seriously consider for the draft to put in their organization. They’re the most important reports I write. 

Brett Mauser is the director of communications for Hamptons Collegiate Baseball. He can be reached at bmauser@hamptonsbaseball.org